It is with deep sadness that I must announce that AstroPhoto Insight Magazine, which I started seven years ago as a newsletter, will be discontinued at the end of this year. It has been an incredible seven years during which I have gotten to know some amazing and talented people, many of whom have become my friends. Many personal and business factors contributed to this very difficult decision.

AstroPhoto Insight Magazine was the first publication dedicated to astrophotography. With an eye on the cutting edge, I published the magazine only as a digital publication, an approach that many traditional print magazines adopted years later. AstroPhoto Insight Magazine was also the first astronomy publication – and one of a only a few – that embedded videos in the magazine, creating an interactive publication even before the iPad and other tablets existed.

I want to thank all of our advertisers for their support over the years. I want especially to thank a couple of our long term supporters, Orion Telescopes and Binoculars and QSI Cameras, as well two relatively new supporters, Celestron and Optec Inc. Their support over the years helped us serve the astrophotography community.

More importantly, I want to thank all of the writers who contributed articles, without which there would be no magazine. The magazine has never had staff writers, relying instead on contributions from hobbyists like you. We have been fortunate to have amazing, talented, recognized imagers contributing articles and videos, including Rogelio Bernas Andreas, Warren Keller, Martin Pugh, Ken Crawford, Richard Berry, Ray Gralak, Stan Moore, Craig Stark, Neil Fleming, David Snay, Kevin Dixon, Alan Smallbone, Jonathan Burnett, Sander Pool, Michael Fulbright, Joe Ulowetz, David Haworth and many others. It was an honor to publish the three part series on creating 3D astro-images by Chris Ford, RenderMan Business Director at Pixar.

I strived to publish a world class magazine, and I hope that you have enjoyed it.

AstroPhoto Insight Magazine will close out the year with four more issues, including the always popular Camera and Mount Buyer’s Guide issue. If your current subscription ends before the end of the year, you will not be able to renew but will have the option of purchasing individual issues as they are published starting with the March/April 2012 issue.

Those who have never subscribed to AstroPhoto Insight Magazine will have to purchase upcoming issues individually starting with the March/April 2012 issue. We are offering a Back Issue Subscription that allows you to download every issue ever published through the current issue (January/February 2012).

If you have never subscribed to the magazine, or haven't recently renewed your subscription recently, we encourage you to take advantage of the Back Issue Subscription to get the issues you missed at this great price before the magazine's website goes offline on December 31, 2012.

I have enjoyed being part of this great astrophotography community and have appreciated all the positive feedback I received over the years.

Very sorry to hear it. API was one of my fave pubs and my very favorite astro e-zine. If my astrophotography competency had been a little higher, I would have loved to have contributed to it--not that you needed my help; your contributors and articles were top notch. You did a fine job.

Rex, we were doing database maintenance last night. The website is available, so you can get the back issue subscription and download all the issues to read during your journey into astrophotography. There are a lot of great articles; as a beginner, I'd start with the autoguiding articles.

We've put together a single (massive) download of all the back issues. Anyone with a current subscription, including the Back Issue subscription, can download this 572 MB ZIP file to easily access all the back issues.

I'm sorry to hear you're closing down the magazine.I'm planning on getting back into astronomy and astrophotography next spring when I complete grad school and can finally have the free time (and money) to get back into the hobby.I purchased all the back issues so I can have this resource available when I get started. Thank you for offering this service.

I am a relatively new astrophotographer (been shooting for about a year) and I did not know about this magazine until I saw this post. Al, Sorry to hear this is being discontinued. I just purchased all of the back issues and have started to read them. These are an enjoyable read and contain a wealth of information.